Crime Factory is live!

Give it up, see!

Yeah, ya mug, Crime Factory Magazine has got you covered and you don't stand a chance! Whether it's in PDF, or as a Kindle format, they've got you surrounded!

Ken Bruen has the shilelagh, Hilary Davidson is pointing a derringer at your temple, Dave White has a stiletto at your throat, Frank Bill has you in the sights of his Beretta, and Steve Weddle is riding shotgun, with both of his barrels pointed at you.*

All the while, Keith, Cameron, and Liam laugh as they orchestrate this killing. It's curtains for you, curtains!

*How are we all fitting in the same car? I have no idea.

Get Plugged In #1

Walter Conley put together a beautiful online magazine called "Disenthralled," and it also happens to feature a story from my favorite unpublished author Quin Browne.

Pamila Payne brings nuance to crime writing, that's right, nuance. I'm not saying that other crime writers tell a story without it (big glass house, right here), I'm just saying she understands it perfectly...right before she hits you with the denouement.

Speaking of hitting you,Paulie Decibels sucks you in and then hits you with a sucker punch.

Keith Rawson finishes things up with whipped cream and a cherry, via an interview with Reed Farrel Coleman and Ken Bruen.

Recommended Summer Reading

The San Francisco Chronicle has some recommended summer reads by some notable San Francisco and San Francisco Bay Area personalities. We're talking Rita Moreno, Danny Glover, Jaime Lauren, Phillip Kaufman, and Peter Coyote.

Not to mention comedian and Paul D. Brazill impersonator, Will Durst goes with my lifetime favorite.

There's also Joan Chen...

...and let's face it, who cares what the others have to say, when you have Joan Chen? They should've devoted the article solely to her. So my recommendations for you? I'll keep it simple because I'm not a reviewer by any stretch of the imagination.

"Jack Wakes Up." Remember when Quentin Tarantino and John Woo were firing on all cylinders? Well Seth Harwood has all of that in spades. One of the best parts of this book, is that the protagonist, Jack Palms, often doesn't know what he is doing or what he is going to do next. He's purely reactive and damn it, that's perfect. Even though he is a former actor, he is real by virtue of how deals with each situation.

The finale is nothing short of Woo bullet ballet.

"Spade And Archer?" I thought that Joe Gores would nail Hammett's prose, the way that he had done previously in novels and one screenplay. I believe that he didn't try as hard as he could and maybe he didn't want the audience reading this book exactly the way they would read Dashiell.

That being said, this was a good book that while not as crisp as Hammett, is a very satisfying novel. The shadow of the real Thin Man or not, Gores does a brilliant job of creating Sam Spade's back story (don't make me use the word, "prequel") and it is a must read.

Connelly's back, 'nuff said.

Mister Bruen does what few can, he can make you empathize with a psychopath (not the psychopath's actions). He has a prose that is unrivaled and literally like no other. He doesn't write books for the cozy set and by God, who wants that? Crime is not white gloves, tea, cucumber sandwiches, crumpets, and china. It's raw as a blood-red steak on a rusty tin plate, with a chaser of Jameson's in a glass that has never seen water nor soap.

"Once Were Cops" brings to mind the old Raymond Chandler quote about Dashiell Hammett-

"Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish."

Ken Bruen is in Papercuts

Hey, author Ken Bruen is in the New York Times literary blog, Papercuts. In the Living With Music segment, they asked him what his November playlist is and...he listens to the Beach Boys?



Ken "Blood, Guts, Guns, And Jaysus" Bruen listens to "Sloop John B?"

Wha? No, I've checked the calendar and it's not April 1st. Some prankster must have deleted Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak" or "Killer On The Loose" and replaced it with (snicker), The Beach Boys. Oh, Papercuts, that's high comedy, you wacky blogsters, you.